Tagged: “Barriers to Forgiveness”

How do we know when the anger inside is unhealthy?

Here are some questions you can ask yourself, the answers to which will help you see whether or not the anger is unhealthy or not:

1). How much anger do you have inside on a 1 to 10 scale, ranging from 1 (no anger) to 10 (an extreme amount of anger)?  A score in the 7 to 10 range is worth noting.

2). How often do you have this anger?  If you have it for much of the day for most days and this has lasted for weeks or months, then this is worth noting.

3). Do you have difficulty concentrating on tasks which you need to complete on any given day?  If so, how often is this happening? Again, if this occurs on most days, this is worth noting.

4). Does your anger interfere with your sleep?

5). Does the anger interfere with your energy level in that you are tired more often than you should be?

6). Is the anger interfering with your happiness in life?

If your answer is yes to questions 4 through 6, and if your anger is abiding in you, as seen in questions 1 through 3, then you should consider the probability that your anger is in need of correction.  If you have been treated unjustly by other people, then forgiveness may be a good way of regulating this unhealthy anger.

How can a person go about finding out how angry he is?  What does this process look like?

There are at least two steps to uncovering anger.  The first is to look within and to rate what you see for now as your level of anger.  This can be done either by filling out a valid anger scale or more simply by using the 1 to 10 scale of pain that you typically see in a doctor’s office.  That 1 to 10 scale ranges from no anger inside at all (rated 1), to a medium amount of anger (rated 5), to an extreme amount of anger that is very painful (rated 10).

Once a person makes a judgement about the anger, a next step is to discuss how forgiving those who have hurt you can lessen anger.  Once you are convinced that forgiveness can help you, this becomes a kind of safety net for you.  This safety net then can help you to let down your psychological defenses about how angry you really are.  At this point, you can re-take the valid anger scale or again go through the 1 to 10 scale exercise.  At this point, people tend to admit even more anger than they did the first time because they now are not afraid of that anger, afraid that there is no solution to that anger.  From here, the process of forgiveness begins.

How do I overcome a sense of self-loathing?  I do not like myself for my past behaviors.

I would recommend that you begin to practice self-forgiveness, which should reduce that sense of self-condemnation or self-loathing.  I actually have an essay at the Psychology Today website with a title that includes those exact words, self-loathing.  The essay gives you advice on beginning the self-forgiveness process.  Here is a link to that essay:

The Cure to Self-Loathing? Self-Forgiveness

I have forgiven someone, but I still feel like a victim.  I want to grow beyond this view of myself as a victim.  What is the next view of myself that you see as usually happening for people?

To see yourself as a victim means that you know you have been wronged.  As you are seeing, if you keep this as your identity, then you are seeing yourself in a one-down position in that someone is keeping you down, keeping you under that person’s power.  The next step is to see that you are a survivor.  You have survived the attempt by others to keep you in a one-down position.  The step after that is to see yourself not only as a survivor but also as a thriver.  In other words, in your surviving the injustices, you have grown in your humanity, and you are now even better than before.  I wish you the best in this journey of growth.

My teenage son is angry, but he is oblivious to this. He does get in trouble in school and with peers, as he bullies them. How can I convince him that he is angry and needs to confront this for his own sake and for the sake of those whom he bullies in school?

A key to breaking the defense mechanism of suppression or repression of the anger is to have a quiet conversation with him in which you go over some of the specific consequences of his anger.  Help him to see, in the safety of his relationship with you, that he is getting in trouble in school and is bullying others, making them miserable.  Ask him, then, if there is anything inside of him, such as intense anger, that is causing these problems.  Eventually, these consequences will have him suffer enough so that he becomes aware of the source of his suffering, which is his anger. From there, you should see if his anger is caused by unjust treatment toward him, in which case his practicing forgiving (specifically toward those who hurt him) may lower that anger.